Everything You Need to Know About Search Engines

Understanding Search Engines

These are scripts or programs widely used on the Internet aiming at supporting users find exactly what they are looking for simplicity. This is done through typing in a specific keyword, phrase or question within the query box of a search engine.

Functioning of a Search Engine

The Search engine uses automated software applications that scan websites for the information requested within a search query. Some of the common examples of these applications include spiders, robots, or bots. Each search engine makes use of its own complex mathematical formula for displaying results. It is also referred to as an 'algorithm'.

Google is one of the leading search engines that provide a unique formula which has emerged as the standard for all other search engines. Hence, most business owners strive hard to base their SEO from those standards.

The algorithm of search engine makes use of key elements of the page to display results. The following listed are some of these key elements used:

- Page title
- Keyword density
- Content

Search engines cannot see images, design aspects or even any of the visual factors on a website. Hence, the text has always been considered the King for successful ranking. No wonder the following are always the matter of discussion when web pages get optimized for search engines:

- Image ALT tags
- Meta tags
- Descriptions
- Various other areas of content within a page

A search engine browses through several millions or even billions of websites to help bring the most relevant to the top of search engine result pages (SERP’s). Spider or crawler used by search engine visits each page and then indexes it within the database.

This process involves:

- Recording links within a page/content
- Assessment of density of keywords
- Stripping out stop words
- Removing information on the page (images and media)

All information gathered is used to locate the page quickly as per the relevance within a search and rank the page for suggesting where it will display in the SERP’s.

Understanding SEO

An acronym for search engine optimization, SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and the quality of the traffic earned from a website through organic search engine results.

Traffic quantity and quality are some of the most crucial aspects of SEO quantity of traffic. Organic traffic is known to be the best type as it’s free and makes you enjoy the benefits of increased revenues via following the SEO guidelines of a search engine.

Google Penalty – What is It?

A Google penalty negatively impacts your website’s rankings, and in some cases it can delete your page from the searches entirely. Google’s standards are high, and they require yours to be as well if you want to get in the top SERP’s, but if you use shady strategies or practices, it can not only impact your rankings, it can destroy them.

Since the year 2000, Google has been busy upgrading its algorithms. It all started with a toolbar extension. None of the business owners knew the importance about ranking on search engines. All of a sudden everyone struggled to get to the top. Google's tweaking of algorithms made visitors being provided with the top, most relevant search results. This is how penalties came into play.

Penguin update surfaced in the year 2012. This created an impact on 1 out of 10 search results. A huge number of websites were erased from the massive index of Google. Shockingly, these became almost non-existent to millions of people. The main aim was to push low quality websites off the map. These were also eradicated completely from the searches. Thankfully, the ritual of using keywords overly to gain attention went extinct. This gave birth to brand new age of quality content.

There are a number of websites that get hit with penalties. With more updates rolling out on a consistent basis in the near future, the trend will certainly continue until everyone adopts the trend and follow guidelines of search engine giant.

It is crucial to read and understand the latest 'Google Webmaster Guidelines' to stay away from a Google penalty as far as possible.